


A Slippery Slope

by karuvapatta



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Bad Parenting, Boss/Employee Relationship, Drinking, F/M, Skiing Trip, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-23 07:37:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16614686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karuvapatta/pseuds/karuvapatta
Summary: The Agrestes go on a family vacation. Nathalie tries to make the most of her evening off.





	A Slippery Slope

His name was Jacques and he wasn’t from the industry, and that was good enough for Nathalie. Besides, she quite liked his wide smile and raspy voice, as well as the way he gesticulated with his left hand to emphasize – whatever it was he was talking about.

Nathalie nursed her own drink and smiled. Like most men, this one was content with her silence. It might worry her more, but she wasn’t in the mood to talk anyway.

“You’re here for long?” Jacques asked, catching up with the fact that he had been talking for seven minutes straight.

“A week,” Nathalie said.

“Vacation?”

“Work, actually,” she smiled at his raised eyebrows. “I don’t mind the change of scenery, though.”

The hotel bar offered a breath-taking view of the mountains, with a brightly lit slope entertaining night skiers. Even so, the sky above was dotted with stars, far more than could ever be seen in Paris. Nathalie liked the view. She liked the air, clear and crisp. She liked the drink, too, warming her from within, and the ambient music, and the way this man glanced at her over the rim of his glass.

And this was when Mr Agreste walked in.

“Good evening, sir,” Nathalie said automatically. Jacques turned around, saw the man, and gaped.

“’Sir’? Is it like a sex thing, or…?”

Mr Agreste regarded him with his coldest, most disdainful expression. He was dressed casually, which meant that he still outshone every man and several women in the room with the crisp lines of his suit and the red blazer arranged artfully around his shoulders.

Nathalie sighed. “No. It’s my boss.”

Jacques still had his suspicions. By taking the seat on Nathalie’s other side, Mr Agreste did the opposite of dispelling them.

“Good evening,” he said.

He ordered a glass of bourbon and sat there sipping it until Jacques took the hint and scampered. No one could make someone feel unwelcome quite like that man.

Nathalie covered her irritation with more alcohol.

“Is there anything you need, sir?” she asked pleasantly. Mulled wine loosened her tongue, as she would never take that tone with him under other circumstances. “You did give me the evening off.”

“It’s not about work,” Mr Agreste said.

She could almost believe him. The trip itself wasn’t going to be about work – no, it was an impressive effort to clock in some father-son bonding time away from the gloomy mansion. And while he did sequester himself in his room for a few hours to work on his designs, Mr Agreste made an actual effort to spend time with Adrien, to the boy’s delight. Still, Nathalie was the one who had to try and keep up with Adrien on skies, which wasn’t possible; then she let him drag her into snowboarding lessons, which she had hoped would slow him down but did the opposite; then she promised to join him on the skating rink tomorrow, even though she was bruised and aching all over by this point. But it made the boy happy, and if Nathalie had any weakness it was an Agreste smiling at her.

“I thought you were spending the evening with Adrien,” she said.

“He was about to call Miss Dupain-Cheng,” Mr Agreste said. “I assumed he wanted some privacy.”

Nathalie smiled to herself. It was a pity Mr Agreste wasn’t thrilled to have some of Adrien’s friends join them, but the man could only be pushed so far when it came to socialization.

The wine was gone. Would another glass be a bad idea? She was dangerously close to a headache tomorrow, but it wasn’t often she got to have time off in a luxurious hotel with such a splendid view. Never mind the fact that she was spending said time off with her boss anyway.

Mr Agreste pressed his lips together and frowned. Following his gaze, Nathalie noticed Jacques hadn’t left the bar and was still – it was a thrilling little thought – occasionally glancing in her direction.

“That man,” Mr Agreste said, voice disapproving. “Has… untoward intentions.”

Nathalie heaved a weary sigh. Mr Agreste was wearing the Butterfly Miraculous under the strategic cover of his blazer, and was apparently unable to turn off its empathy powers even when not searching for a target to akumatize.

Served him right, if she was to be honest.

“I know, sir,” she said. “I _want_ him to feel that way about me.”

Mr Agreste looked at her, eyebrows raised in surprise. “You can do better than that.”

“Maybe so,” Nathalie said. “I just don’t often have the time to.”

She realized what she said and pushed away the empty glass. She had had enough; she had had too much. This idea was terrible to begin with.

She loved her job, perhaps to an unhealthy degree. It was one thing to work crazy long hours on a fashion show or a new winter collection, but another thing entirely to be a constant presence in her boss’s son’s life or an active accomplice in his villainous schemes. She had made the rookie mistake of getting emotionally engaged, and now she had no one to blame but herself.

Emotions, Nathalie thought. What good were they?

“I… apologize,” Mr Agreste said with obvious effort. “For ruining your evening.”

He didn’t sound apologetic. Perhaps he sensed something about Jacques, an affinity for evil; Nathalie didn’t, but she wasn’t the world’s best judge of character. Besides, there was something pleasant about Mr Agreste’s company after so many years: a quiet, mutual understanding that feelings were unnecessary and got in the way of doing actual work. 

“It doesn’t matter,” Nathalie said, and found that she meant it. “I should be going to sleep anyway.”

Mr Agreste rose as she did and followed along as if it was the most natural thing in the world. At that, Nathalie first felt a pang of irritation, and then of something else entirely, colouring her cheeks red. Who would think twice of it, though? Those who knew Mr Agreste already knew her as his shadow, and those that didn’t had no reasons to care.

Her room was in a different part of the hotel from the luxury suite she had booked for the man and his son. She led the way, with growing awareness that Mr Agreste apparently meant to walk her all the way to the door.

“Sir?” she asked, stopping with a keycard near the lock.

The man’s eyes snapped to her, then to the room number, and then back to Nathalie. He cleared his throat.

“I—apologize. I’m used to—”

Used to her following him. Nathalie sighed.

“Your room is upstairs, sir.”

There was an odd quality to his gaze – a softness to his grey blue eyes that she didn’t know how to interpret. He had looked at her that way sometimes, even though it was rare he looked at her at all.

She didn’t mind. She loved her walls, and it was easier to pretend they were there when Mr Agreste wasn’t focused on her. If he looked too carefully he might see too much. It didn’t matter that he swore never to use the Miraculous to spy on Adrien or Nathalie, not when Nathalie couldn’t keep her emotions in check when he stood so close.

“It suits you,” Mr Agreste said softly, touching the strip of red in her hair. She had worn them down the way she never did in public. They looked unprofessional and got in the way; but they did frame her face nicely, black and red, and made her feel slightly less underdressed in the flimsy blouse she chose in favour of the trusty turtleneck or a sensible button-up.

Nathalie’s throat went dry. She realized that her neck was bare all the way to the collarbones; that Mr Agreste’s hand was dangerously close to touching it, his palm radiating a pleasant, human warmth as he adjusted her hairdo. He was an aesthete above all, of course he cared what she looked like—

“Sir.”

Talking was a mistake. He must have heard the tremor in her voice, the hoarseness of it.

“Nathalie,” he said.

It was unfair, the way her name rolled off his tongue. She found herself swiping the keycard and backing into the room, lest she do something stupid like kiss him in the middle of the hotel corridor.

He followed; Nathalie realized she was tugging at his sleeve and drawing him inside, an overeager schoolgirl and not the grown woman she was. She felt light, everything taking on a dreamlike haze once Mr Agreste took her face between his hands.

 _Stupid_ , was Nathalie’s last clear thought. Then she was kissing him, focused on nothing but the warmth of his touch, the soft press of his mouth. She couldn’t suppress a shiver once he wound his arms around her waist, pulling her closer, impossibly close.

She was helpless against this man. She had known that for a very long time and managed to make peace with the fact. The feeling came back in full force now; she didn’t stop him when he slipped the blouse upwards, over her head, his fingers ghosting over her bare skin. He traced the lacework of her bra, even now focused on texture of the fabric, even as Nathalie gasped out-loud when his lips pressed against her neck, teasing her with an edge of teeth. She didn’t stop him when he unzipped her skirt and let it fall down, pooling at her feet.

“This isn’t my design,” Mr Agreste murmured. His hand slid from her hip down her thigh, examining her panties, the garter belt she put on for fun, the upper part of her stockings.

Nathalie laughed breathlessly, looping an arm around his shoulders for support. She didn’t think she could stand for long, not when Mr Agreste’s fingers brushed the skin of her inner thigh.

“Your lingerie has your name on it,” she said. “How do you think I’d feel wearing that?”

His grip on her thigh tightened, digging into the bruises that were the result of her snowboarding attempts. Nathalie gasped, the sharp pain fading into something warm and pleasant that pooled low in her stomach.

As if he needed more reasons to be smug. As if she needed more reasons to feel like she belonged to this man, wholly and completely.

He took a step back to undress, folding his clothes as he did so, and then setting the neat pile on the desk. Nathalie smiled, oddly charmed by his fastidiousness; the lost, again, in the sight of his toned chest, the flush on his cheeks, the way he whispered her name when she pushed him gently towards the narrow bed.

“Is this all right?” Mr Agreste murmured, holding her hands, her hips; pulling her to him, until she knelt, straddling him, holding onto his chest for support.

“What do you mean, sir?” Nathalie asked softly. “Getting me to do all the work?”

“But you are so good at it, Nathalie,” he whispered, sincere for once; he was completely naked, but it was the vulnerability in his voice that broke the last of Nathalie’s resolve. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

 _Stupid_ , Nathalie thought again; she was, without a doubt, the stupidest woman in France. But then Mr Agreste kissed her and she thought no more.


End file.
